Max Weber is
conventionally described as a value-free sociologist who rose above politics.
His work is assumed to have a timeless quality that is not at all related to
the debates within his own society at the time. Weber was primarily concerned
with three central issues. These emerge in Weber’s earliest writings but they
continue throughout his life. One was the question of empire: why was
imperialism in Germany’s interest? The second was the leadership of Germany:
after its unification, who was to lead the German nation? Finally, there was
the question of class division and the rise of Marxism: how best was Marxism to
be combated? In the following section a brief overview of his methodology and some
of his major works are described.

Early sociology tried to
model itself on the natural sciences and sought to import their methods into
the study of society. The positivist school of Auguste Comte was the most
ambitious in this regard. It believed that the process of observation and
comparison of social phenomena would eventually yield evidence of social laws.
These in turn would enable the sociologist to predict future behaviour and so
develop a certain power to control events. The positivist approach put primary
emphasis on observable human behaviour. But soon questions emerged. What if our
observations were biased by our culture, language or the peculiar features of
our mind? In addition, where did mental activity, which was unobservable, fit
into this? What role did interpretation and choice play in constructing the
social order?

Weber’s sociology became
part of the revolt against positivism. Philosophically, he was influenced by
German idealism, which assigned a huge role to the human mind in actively
constructing the observable world. Ideologically, he was deeply committed to
what might be now termed a neo-liberal concept of ‘free choice’, which grew out
of his support for market-based economics. Both these strands led him to a
series of writings on methodology which has had enormous influence on
subsequent sociologists. Weber’s writings on methodology were published
posthumously in Max Weber on the
Methodology of the Social Sciences. This contains articles on whether
knowledge about society can be objective or whether it is relative.

Weber’s sociology is based
on a methodological individualism which seeks to break down collectivities such
as ‘classes’ or ‘nations’ or ‘the family’ in order to see them as the outcome
of social actions of individual persons. For Weber, however, choice plays a
huge role in society and, therefore, in the methodology of disciplines that
study it. The subject matter of sociology, he argued, was social action. Action
occurs when ‘the acting individual
attaches a subjective meaning to his behaviour – be it overt or covert,
omission or acquiescence[1]’.
In other words, the individual interprets, chooses, and evaluates what they are
doing, according to their own distinct mental life. Action is social when the
meaning given by the individual ‘takes account of the behaviour of others and
is thereby orientated in its course[2]’.
Society is formed by individuals choosing, interpreting and acting in ways that
take account of the fact that other individuals are doing likewise.

A number of complex
conclusions followed from this particular view of the social world. The first
was the famous Verstehen method. Following the wider German idealist tradition
Weber denied that the discovery of general laws added anything to our
understanding of ‘why’ humans acted as they did. Even if there was strictly
statistical evidence to show that all men who had been placed in a particular
situation invariably reacted in a certain way, all this would show would be
that their actions were calculable. Such a demonstration, he argued, would
‘contribute absolutely nothing to the project of “understanding” “why” this
reaction ever occurred and, moreover, “why” it invariably occurs in the same
way’[3].
What was needed instead was a method of Verstehen or understanding, which would
allow us to get into the inner sense of how individuals subjectively
interpreted and chose what they were doing. In Weber’s own words, the Verstehen
method means,

to identify a
concrete ‘motive’ or complex of motives ‘reproducible in inner experience’, a
motive to which we can attribute the conduct in question with a degree of
precision that is dependent upon our source material. In other words because of
its susceptibility to a meaningful interpretation ... individual conduct is in
principle intrinsically less ‘irrational’ than the individual natural event[4].

There are two types of
Verstehen. One is a direct observational understanding where we grasp what is
really going on merely through noticing facial expressions or outward
behaviour. Another type is explanatory understanding where we place the action
in a ‘sequence of motivation’ and so work out why it is occurring. In both
cases sociology is primarily about putting oneself in another’s mind. By using
precise methods to access the motives of other people we are able to understand
why they acted as they did. From this point of view, the behaviour of someone
you truly know is far more predictable than the weather. Notice here the
implicit promise that Weber is holding out: it is possible to focus on Geist or
culture or motives and still be as ‘scientific’ as the natural sciences. His
aim was to rid the Verstehen method of a lazy, intuitive approach, which simply
assumed there was a natural empathy between individuals. He wanted to lend it
instead a ‘scientific’ rigour. Or, to put it in a broader context, to link the
German idealist tradition to the motor of modernity.

This rigorous approach to
Verstehen demanded a trade-off from the sociologists – they would have to be
‘value free’. As conflicting values reflected power struggles in society, the
sociologist had to put aside their own values when engaged in research. In
order to access the mind of others who might have opposing values it was
necessary to temporarily put one’s own values aside. It should be clear
‘exactly at which point the scientific investigator becomes silent and the
evaluating and acting person begins to speak’.[5]
Another reason for the strict injunction about value freedom was that Weber
believed that there was an unbridgeable gap between the world of ‘what is’ and
‘what should be’. Empirical research could not lead to any conclusions about
values because ‘to judge the validity of such values is a matter of faith’.[6]
There were also, however, more pragmatic reasons for advocating ‘value
freedom’.

Social scientists also
needed to assess how people used the scarce means that were available to
achieve their ends. They could ‘scientifically’ draw out the implications of
the pursuit of certain values and illustrate to people the actual means that
would be required to achieve them. They could do this even while opposed to
their value system. The social scientist could select a problem for
investigation and have the direction of the investigation kickstarted by their
own value system – but once underway, he or she needed to suspend their own
values and adopt the most rigorous scientific methods. The following is
probably is the clearest summary of Weber’s complex argument:

1.The choice of the object
of investigation ... [is] determined by the evaluative ideas which dominate the
investigator and his age.

2.In the method of
investigation, the guiding ‘point of view’ [of the researcher] is of great
importance for the construction of the conceptual schema which will be used in
the investigation.

3.[but] in the mode of their use [i.e. the conceptual schema]
the investigator is bound by the [scientific] norms of our thought just as much
here as elsewhere. For scientific truth is precisely what is valid for all who
seek the truth.

Weber added one more
element to his attempt to marry a subjective focus on values with his desire
for objective methodological rigour. This was the ideal type, which Weber
believed was ‘heuristically indispensable’ for sociological and historical
research.[7]
To understand it we need again to return to the old debate between the
Historical School of Economics and the Austrian marginalist school. The Austrian
school sought to eliminate all discussion of particular national cultures from
the workings of each economy. Their analysis started out from an economic man
who existed as an isolated atom. The marginalists placed this imaginary man in
particular situations of scarcity, or in situations with different balances
between supply and demand. From these scenarios, they devised general laws of
the economy that could be stated with quite mathematical precision. One of
their number, Stanley Jevons, stated that ‘the general form of the laws of
economy is the same in the case of individuals and nations’.[8]
This level of formal equivalence could only occur because the economic man they
started out from was shorn of his particular histories, foibles, and cultures –
he was an abstract model or ‘ideal type’, which functioned as a sort of thought
experiment. Weber summarised the underlying philosophy of the marginalist
school by saying that it examined what course a ‘given type of human action
would take if it were strictly rational, unaffected by errors or emotional
factors and if, furthermore, it were completely and unequivocally directed to a
single end, the maximization of economic advantage’.

Weber wanted to import the
methodology of the ideal type into the wider field of social science because he
believed it would impose an intellectual discipline on the researcher who was
using the Verstehen method. The sociologist, he argued, had to follow the
economist in constructing an ideal type that highlighted certain aspects of
reality. The ideal type was not meant as a description but was a ‘one-sided
accentuation of one or more points of view’ and a ‘synthesis of a great many
diffuse, discrete … concrete individual phenomena, which are arranged according
to those one-sidedly emphasized viewpoints into a unified analytical construct’[9].
It was therefore a model that was based on pure elements that represented
people’s motive and culture. So, for example, the researcher could develop an
ideal type of a Puritan by assembling together the pure motives that followed
from their religious beliefs. Or in a more complex fashion, he or she could
develop an ideal type of the ‘handicraft’ economy in order to contrast it with
‘industrial capitalism’. Ideal types were models for highlighting contrasts and
comparisons between different societies. They also allowed connections to be
drawn between different spheres of society, between, say, religious beliefs and
economic action. These were known as elective affinities.

Weber was keen to stress
that the ideal types were only explanatory devices which helped to bring out
the significance and meanings that humans bestow on their actions. The
criterion of their success was whether they revealed ‘concrete culture
phenomena in their interdependence, their causal conditions and their
significance’.26

The ideal types were
related to the four main categories of social action. These were:

•Traditional action, which was a form of ingrained habit – you
do something because it was always done like that;

·Affective action, which is based on emotional feeling – you
do something because of love for, say, a brother or sister;

•Value rational action, where actions are undertaken for some
ethical or religious ideal and there is no consideration of its prospect of
success – you do something for God or ‘the cause’;

•Instrumentally rational action, which is based on rational
calculation about the specific means of achieving definite ends – you do
something because it is the most effective means of achieving a specific goal.

Weber’s most famous book
is The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of
Capitalism. It is regarded by many sociologists as one of the key texts in
their discipline. Its central question is: why did capitalism begin in Western
Europe rather than in Asia? Weber’s answer focussed on religion – in
particular, the Protestant Reformation.

The book is important
because it moved sociology from a concern with general evolutionary patterns to
a comparative approach. Writers such as Auguste Comte had devised a universal
scheme whereby societies moved through a series of stages. His three main
stages were the ‘theological’, where religious belief was dominant; the
‘metaphysical’, where the language of human rights became more prevalent; and finally
the ‘positivist’ stage, where conflicts were resolved by a scientific elite who
understood social laws. Marx had questioned this broad schema, which was based
on abstract systematising. However, it was Weber who shifted the focus to a
comparative analysis, attempting to identify what was unique and different
about particular societies.

The crucial point of
Weber’s argument was that Western Europe was unique in giving birth to modern
capitalism. This then framed the question that forms the core of the book: how
did this unique development occur? Weber defined capitalism. ‘The impulse to
acquisition, pursuit of gain, of money, of the greatest possible amount of
money’, Weber wrote ‘has in itself nothing to do with capitalism’.[10]
Many people might, on the contrary, think that these features have everything
to do with capitalism. If you remove the catchall phrase ‘in itself’ the
sentence would appear truly extraordinary. However, Weber’s argument was that
the impulse to pursue money is common to all people in all times and so is not
unique to capitalism. Definitions have to focus on what is unique and essential
and so Weber claimed that the essential feature of capitalism is its pursuit of
‘renewed profit, by means of continuous rational ... enterprise’. Formally, he
defined capitalist action as ‘one which rests on the expectation of profit by
the utilization of opportunities for exchange, that is on (formally) peaceful
chances of profit’. Like Marx, he notes that rational capitalism rests on ‘formally
free labour’. This is labour which is bought and sold on the market place like
any other commodity. For this system to emerge there had to be a number of
preconditions in place. One was a rational structure of law that lent stability
and certainty to the calculations about moneymaking. Another was an
administration based on trained officials who did not rely on tax collection to
line their own pockets. Still another precondition was the development of
technology. Technology here is understood not simply as machinery but also as
forms of knowledge such as bookkeeping, which paved the way for a more
calculating culture.

The central theme of
Weber’s analysis is an exploration of protestant spirit. There is some
evidence, he claims, to suggest a prima facie case for a link between the
Protestant religion and capitalism. Business leaders in Germany tend to be
Protestant; districts with the highest level of economic development are
Protestant; Protestant students tend to study technical and scientific subjects
while Catholics choose more ‘humanistic’ ones.

Weber identifies the
spirit of capitalism as ‘the earning of more and more money, combined with the
strict avoidance of all spontaneous enjoyment of life’. This spirit led to the
formation of a sober, industrious bourgeois class but it was also necessary for
the creation of a modern working class. Capitalism needed constantly to
increase productivity but it could only do so when workers did not look for
‘the maximum of comfort and the minimum of exertion’ and instead performed
labour as if it were an ‘absolute end in itself, a calling’.

Where did this new
capitalist spirit come from? After all, moneymaking went against the dominant
culture of medieval times. According to Thomas Aquinas, moneymaking was a
‘turpitudo’ – it was dirty, and sinful. Money was a ‘filthy lucre’ and painters
such as Pieter Bruegel often depicted money as faeces. An individual could not
make the breakthrough against this culture. The spirit of capitalism had to come
from a way of life that was common to whole groups. Possible candidates were
traders or pirates who engaged in moneymaking, despite the dominant culture.
Weber, however, rules them out as originators of the new society because they
were not engaged in regular, systematic accumulation of capital. They went for
a series of one off gains or displayed an uncontrolled impulse of greed.
Traditionalist opposition to moneymaking could only be shaken by a profound
culture change and this is precisely what occurred in the Reformation. The
psychological impact of the Reformation allowed Protestants both to adopt an
enterprising, rational spirit and to look on work as a duty.

The teachings of Luther
and Calvin were decisive. Prior to Luther, the Catholic Church drew a sharp
distinction between the moral codes that applied to the laity and secular
clergy on the one hand and religious orders on the other. The religious orders
were obliged to follow the higher morality of the gospels, especially expressed
in vows of obedience, poverty and chastity. This moral code was seen as
impossible to fulfil in a secular life and so holiness was defined as a
withdrawal from the world. Luther changed all this when he introduced the
concept that every person had a ‘calling’ or a ‘vocation’ given to him or her
by God. Weber claims that Luther’s translation of the Bible shifted the meaning
of a key term so that labour in everyday life was seen as a God appointed task.
Withdrawal from the world into monasteries was deemed a form of selfish
idleness; true holiness meant fulfilling your worldly duties so as to glorify
God.

This was potentially a
revolutionary doctrine but Luther still gave it a traditional twist. Under the
impact of the Peasant War in Germany – where Luther turned on many of his own
radical supporters – he stressed how individuals needed to adapt themselves to
the particular calling chosen for them by God. If a peasant’s lot was to farm
barren land while the lord lived off his taxes, then each had simply to accept
those positions as their calling.

It fell to Calvin to draw
out the more radical elements of the Reformation. Calvin returned to the
traditional dilemma that all Christians face – if God is all-powerful, then how
can individuals have a genuinely free choice? Logically there was no scope for
autonomous human decision-making if God was so powerful that he had created the
future in advance. Calvin, therefore, adopted the famous doctrine of
predestination whereby God had preordained who was going to heaven and hell. The
effect of this doctrine was to produce an intense, lonely form of anxiety,
which cut each individual off from other human beings.

Consider for a moment what
was involved. If it was preordained that only a small number of students – the
elect – would pass exams and the rest would be thrown out of college, think of
the high levels of anxiety this would cause. However, in the sixteenth century,
we are not considering relatively trivial matters such as careers but the whole
of one’s eternal life. One result of this anxiety was that it led people
desperately to search to see if they were part of the elect. The Calvinist
sects, who were communities of true believers, taught that it was one’s
‘absolute duty to consider oneself chosen, to combat all doubts as temptations
of the devil’. In order to attain this selfconfidence, intense worldly activity
was recommended. Success in one’s calling alone dispersed religious doubts and
gave certainty of grace. Calvinism therefore led to a highly individualistic
desire for achievement as a means of counteracting religious anxiety.

Weber refers to the
psychological state whereby people removed everything from their life that
interfered with their calling as a ‘worldly asceticism’. Protestant beliefs
encouraged people to bring their actions under constant self-control. They
could not turn to a priest or the confessional to relieve sins and anxiety.
Their only way of relieving anxiety was ‘not single good works but a life of
good works combined into a unified system’. Idleness and wasting of time became
the greatest sins. Everything had to be put into a methodical pursuit of a
calling. In this way, the asceticism of the monastery was brought out into the
marketplace. Calvinism ‘substituted for the spiritual aristocracy of monks outside
of and above the world, the spiritual aristocracy of the predestined saints of
God within the world’. Unlike Luther’s interpretation, the doctrine of the
calling did not imply an acceptance of one’s lot but rather an injunction to
work hard, to make money in order to glorify God. It condemned idle
‘spontaneous enjoyment of possessions’, dishonesty and impulsive avarice but
still promoted wealth as a means of showing the individual that they had a sign
of God’s blessing.

All of this was part of
the unintended consequences of the Reformation. Nobody became a Protestant in
order to become a capitalist but the psychological effects of the actual
doctrine were highly significant, in their unanticipated consequences. It led
to ‘the accumulation of capital through ascetic compulsion to save’. Religious
asceticism also provided employers ‘with sober, conscientious and unusually
industrious workmen, who clung to their work as to a life purpose willed by
Gods’. Above all the ideal of methodical self-control led to the ‘ethos of
rational organisation of capital and labour’. Against Sombart, Weber claims
that Judaism led ‘to the politically and speculatively orientated adventurous
capitalism’ whereas Puritanism promoted a rational sober bourgeois life that
restrained the consumption of wealth and so increased productive investment of
capital.

Weber provided subsequent
sociologists with a wealth of concepts that became their toolbox for generating
new theories. He liked to draw up a set of typologies to categorise different
forms of social action. One of the most famous of these is the different
categories of domination which have been exercised in society. Weber argued
that there were three main forms of domination – traditional, charismatic and
rational legal. The writings on these forms of domination are to be found in
Economy and Society. Weber used his vast historic knowledge to provide examples
from a wide range of societies to illustrate the dynamics of each of these
forms of domination. He was less interested in how people resisted or overthrew
the power structures and focussed more on how they were maintained. He assumed
that domination was natural and drew from the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche
a belief that the ‘will to power’ pervaded all human relationships.

Weber’s definition of
power has also become a classic in sociology. Power, he argued ‘is the probability that one actor within a
social relationship will be in a position to carry out his own will despite
resistance, regardless of the basis on which this probability exists’. This
definition focuses on the individual actor and their will – on this inner
mental capacity to enforce their desires. There is no reference to resources –
either economic or military – which the particular actor might need. As Brennan
has pointed out, it is a subjective definition of power and one more likely to
flatter existing power holders. Those at the bottom are more likely to
experience power as an objective constraint – they obey the capitalist or the
slave owner because these hold the machinery or the whip, not necessarily
because they respect his or her will.

Weber acknowledged that
his definition of power was amorphous because it could refer to all conceivable
circumstances. His principal writings focus instead on domination, which he saw
as a special case of power. Domination is defined as ‘the probability that a command with a given specific content will be
obeyed by a given group of persons’. This is again a broad opening
statement but Weber soon moves to distinguish between two main forms of
domination. There is, first, domination by monopoly control of economic
resources. So a central bank or a multinational like Standard Oil can enforce
their command over debtors or on garage retailers because they hold the economic
monopoly. Second, there is domination by the authority of office. Thus state
officials or army generals use non-economic sources of power to dominate. The
distinction between them can be fluid and one form of domination can develop
into another.

Weber argues that there
are three ideal types of legitimate authority in history. These ideal types are
not necessarily found in pure forms in the real world but they are useful
yardsticks to measure reality against.

·Traditional authority rests on beliefs in the sanctity of
immemorial tradition and custom. This type of domination is exercised by tribal
chiefs, patriarchs, feudal aristocrats.

·Charismatic authority rests on devotion to the exceptional
sanctity, heroism or personal magnetism of a heroic figure. Revolutionary
leaders, prophets and warriors, for instance, exercise this type of authority.

·Legal Rational authority is based on properly enacted rules
and is given to office holders rather than specific persons. Bureaucrats and
government ministers have authority of this type.

Weber’s three ideal types
distinguish between the grounds on which obedience is based. Parkin[11]
provides an excellent, succinct summary

Traditional authority is
based on respect for the sanctity of age old rules and customs and involves
loyalty to a personal master. Obedience is not given simply to an office but to
a lord or a prince. All traditional authority involves a double sphere. On the
one hand, the master has personal discretion in a wide area. They are entitled
to make arbitrary and unilateral demands when it suits and expect obedience
precisely because they are seen as a personal master. On the other hand,
obedience is delivered within the bounds of a tradition that places limits on
the arbitrary power of the ruler.

Throughout his sociology
of domination, Weber’s primary focus was on the relationship between the ruler
and their administrative staff. The administrative staff make up the apparatus
that carries out and enforces the ruler’s wishes among the masses. Any
relationship of domination has three elements – the ruler, the administrative staff,
and the ruled. Weber, though, focused only on the first two. He paid particular
attention to the material interests of the staff, the organisational principles
through which they operate and their wider relationship to the ruler. He simply
assumed that they conquer ‘the masses’.

The term charisma in
Christian theology means ‘the gift of grace’. Weber took over the term and
added ‘charismatic leader’ to modern political vocabularies. No account of
modern elections is now complete without some reference to the semi-magical,
mysterious quality of charisma. However, the coinage has been debased. Charisma
can apparently be won by a hairdo, an engaging smile, a vague sex appeal, etc. For
Weber, charisma had an altogether more important meaning. Charismatic leaders
were seen by their followers to have some extraordinary power or quality that
commanded obedience. In more primitive societies, these powers were magical and
the leaders were either superhuman or supernatural. In modern society,
charismatic leaders arise in periods of great turbulence or crisis and answer a
need. The leader is literally blessed with a sign of grace or, in secular
terms, is a genius. As Bendix puts it, ‘it is associated with a collective
excitement through which masses of people respond to some extraordinary
experience and by virtue of which they surrender themselves to a heroic
leader’.

The administrative staff
of charismatic leaders are not chosen because of qualifications, social status,
or family loyalty. They are recruited simply as followers. There is no set
hierarchy, no prospect of promotion or career. There is not even a regular
salary because pure charisma is foreign to economic considerations. The staff
can be looked after by the seizure of booty or by gifts but any provision for a
regular career structure is despised. In order to live up to their mission the
leader and his followers ‘must be free of the ordinary worldly attachments and
duties of occupational and family life’.

The normal means of
domination in modern societies is legal rational authority and bureaucracy.
Weber’s main concern was with the culture of rationality that led to
bureaucracy and the consequences this held for the world. Legal authority rests
on a number of interdependent factors. There has to be a legal code which
covers everyone in a particular territory. It has to be based on consistent,
abstract rules – so that people know in advance the penalties for
infringements. Crucially, the rulers themselves must also be subject to these
rules. The arbitrary discretion that was granted to charismatic or traditional
rulers is removed. People obey authority in their capacity as citizens or
members of particular associations. Crucially, obedience is given to an office
holder and not the person.

The administrative staff
in this form of authority are more highly developed and in their purest form
become a bureaucracy. The staff operate continuously according to rules that
govern the conduct of their official business. They each have a definite
specified area of competence that is laid down by their job descriptions. These
areas of jurisdiction give them powers to fulfil their duties only in these
specific areas. The jurisdictions do not overlap but are based on a rational
division of labour. The whole system forms a hierarchical pyramid so that the higher
offices supervise the lower offices. Rules are laid down for each office and
the official is given specialised training so that he or she can meet them.

The axial principal of
bureaucracy is ‘domination through knowledge’. It is popular today to disparage
bureaucracy as ‘red tape’ and to caricature the way that officials fill in
forms and memos in triplicate. This misses the point, however. The modern
office is indeed based on the management of files but this is to ensure that
those at the top have ‘a special knowledge of facts and have available to them
a store of documentary material peculiar to themselves’. They know more about
the ruled than any previous authorities in history. They also know exactly how
their commands will be implemented since the room for personal discretion among
their staff is virtually nil. Bureaucracy has invented the concept of the
‘official secret’ which means that information can be gathered and exact
commands transmitted in a secretive way. Individual officials can be penalised
for divulging these official secrets to the public. Normally, however, it does
not come to this because ‘bureaucratic administration always tends to exclude
the public, to hide its knowledge and action from criticism as well as it can’.

A bureaucracy, therefore,
is a permanent machine and different rulers can use it. After the country is
defeated, for example, the bureaucratic apparatus survives and is usually taken
over by the new rulers. This suggests that ‘at the top of a bureaucratic
organisation, there is necessarily an element which is at least not purely
bureaucratic’. At the apex of the system, there is a will, a personality whose
wishes have to be enforced. Weber’s central argument, though, is that
bureaucracy is the most efficient way of conducting this rule.

[Author's declaration: This material is prepared from Max
Weber A Critical Introduction by Kieran Allen London:
Pluto Press (2004)]An Earlier Version of Max Weber can be found here

Its Kaleidoscope

A cotraveler who seats endlessly on a chair that we tend to call world and moves through wonder places. Try not to move from the chair, transcending time. Try to unearth silences and capture through multiple lenses. Behind the corner of my eyes there are things I can not see... things I do not understand...
So here I am with words to share and become a cotraveler from my being. Yes, so many things to express but not genuinely gifted with skills.